THOM FORBES

Thom Forbes has written about marketing and media for more than 25 years. He was editorial director of Adweek and its sister publications in the 1980s and has covered the beat as a freelancer since 1990. For more than three years, he wrote Around the Net in Brand Marketing for MediaPost.

Who ya gonna email when you need a gutter cleaned, iPad fixed or interior designed? Who else? Amazon hopes. "Now you can buy a sink on Amazon and hire someone to come and install it. Or a goat herder
to tend your flock. Or someone to teach you aerial yoga," writes Elizabeth Weise in "USA Today."

The Lincoln Continental - in name, spirit and ambition, at least - is back. With the emerging Chinese market as a catalyst, a concept of the revamped brand will be shown at the New York International
Auto Show this week and will go on sale here and there next year as a rolling personification of capitalistic achievement.

After five years in the No. 2 spot for soda volume, Diet Coke slipped back to third behind regular Pepsi-Cola in "Beverage Digest"'s annual reckoning of beverage sales, reflecting consumers' growing
concerns about artificial sweeteners, among other factors.

The Centers for Disease Control is rolling out a fresh pack of gruesome "Tips from Former Smokers" #CDCTips ads today, including a "Twitter Takeover" (#TipsTakeover) event from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
according to a Facebook post, that will feature at least one regretful user of e-cigarettes. Unlike tobacco-based nicotine products, e-cigs can be widely advertised and marketed.

In a match made in comfort-food nirvana -- mac & cheese with ketchup -- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital will merge H.J. Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods Group
in a deal announced early this morning, creating the third-largest food and beverage company in North America and the fifth-largest in the world. The Kraft Heinz Co., with revenues of about $28
billion and eight billion-dollar-plus brands between them, will be co-headquartered in Pittsburgh and the Chicago area.

You can bet that Mickey Mantle rookie card they won't be rebranding it "The Helsinki Slugger" but the Finnish company that owns Wilson Sporting Goods has agreed to pay Hillerich & Bradsby $70 million
cash for the "global brand, sales and innovation rights" to the hallowed Louisville Slugger brand of baseball bats.

"Becoming Steve Jobs," an unauthorized biography that will be released tomorrow, has not only been garnering headlines for a "Fast Company" excerpt and selected leaks, but also is being positioned as
a more accurate -- and sympathetic -- portrayal of the Apple founder than the one in "Steve Jobs," the authorized and bestselling biography by Walter Isaacson.

"Wheredja learn to drive?" will begin its road trip to the Archive of Quaint Phrases this summer if Tesla Motors has its way. CEO Elon Musk said yesterday that a software update to the Model S will
allow it to drive itself on highways or private property as soon as three months from now.

Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz aggressively defended the company's new "#RaceTogether" initiative at the company's annual meeting yesterday following such widespread criticism online and
elsewhere that Corey duBrowa (@coreydu), its SVP of global communications, temporarily deleted his Twitter account writing: "I felt personally attacked in a cascade of negativity .... Most of all, I
was concerned about becoming a distraction from the respectful conversation around Race Together that we have been trying to create."

By the end of the decade, it may be cheaper to fly from Europe to NYC than it is to get from Staten Island to Brooklyn by automobile. The board of Ryanair, the largest carrier in Europe by volume,
yesterday approved a five-year plan to launch transatlantic flights with tickets that could start at just GBP10 ($14.67 this morning) for flights to the U.S. Meanwhile, the one-way cash toll on the
Verrazano Bridge is increasing from $15 to $16 this Sunday.

Correction: JMPR Public Relations, the new agency for Funrise, writes: “While we’d LOVE to take credit for the Ford F750, the JMPR team actually had nothing to do with the efforts there. That was an effort from the Ford side. ”

For the Record: A spokesman for Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores says: "We’ve conducted initial scoping discussions, but have not reached an agreement with Jet."
As for signing up for a free trial with Jet, I'd advise that you go directly to the site — https://www.jet.com/ — and start your own referrer network, if you're interested, rather than join someone else's.

I apologize that you saw the reference as anti-Semitic, Mr. Smith. It certainly was not intended to be. It was a reference to lower-income Americans having to rely on loan sharks whose enforcers — low-level gangsters — tend to have broken noses from their activities. Maybe I read too many Hardy Boy books in my youth or was too enamored of the legend of "Wild Bill" Hickok, who was shot and killed by "Crooked Nose Jack" McCall.

Cash's involvement with Chrysler-Plymouth goes back to the mid-'50s and his music was still being used in recent spots . When he was amongst us, he also had an affection for sweet chariots http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Y_GLT4_9I

Could be, Stan. I know I had “rabbi" on my mind this morning. I’d just read an email from a cousin that contained a sketch for a new gravestone for our great, great grandfather, a rabbi whose original stone in the Hebrew Rest Cemetery in New Orleans was badly damaged by Katrina.
In any event, there are several interesting issues here, which is the reason I chose this story over, say, the uptick in auto sales last month. One is how the Supreme Court decides and the possible repercussions on airline pricing. Then there's the more far-reaching concept of which customers marketers should be focusing their attention on (within the law, of course) as you and Daniel suggest. All this against the backdrop of what Paula identifies as an increasingly concentrated industry (see AA and US Airways last week) in which the consumer has fewer choices.
So, gaffe aside, at least we’ve got that conversation going ...